Ozoneocean wrote:

usedbooks wrote:
I enjoyed the Good Omens serial. It was more cohesive than the book. Of course, as with all book adaptations, it left out some of the bits I liked (most notably the other four riders of the apocalypse), but cutting some things did help streamline the story.

The four horsemen are there… They haven't ridden horses yet in the part I've seen but I saw Famine and War, played by that lady from Catch.

I meant The Other Four Horsemen (from the book): Grievous Bodily Harm, Really Cool People, Cruelty to Animals, and Embarrassing Personal Problems

The book has eight horsemen. Because four mortal bikers are mistaken for the other four.

usedbooks wrote:
The book has eight horsemen. Because four mortal bikers are mistaken for the other four.

Ah! Haha! How cool XD

Ozoneocean wrote:

What's this Barry thing?

maybe it's about an R&B singer with the silkiest bass voice wot you ever heard. Awwwwww, yeah…

Enjoying Spy x Family at the moment. Because explaining an anime plot is futile, I'll just say it's cute with some action and just a touch of magic realism (one of the characters reads minds). It has a nice, light mood and good pacing.

I was re-watching Arpeggio of Blue Steel on Crunchyroll last night and saw a banner for SPY x FAMILY, clicked on it and started watching, that kid is something else.

Is anybody watching the Obi-Wan Kenobi series?

dpat57 wrote:
I was re-watching Arpeggio of Blue Steel on Crunchyroll last night and saw a banner for SPY x FAMILY, clicked on it and started watching, that kid is something else.

The blue steel thing is a strange anime about ships with weird sigils isn't it?

Dave Mire wrote:
Is anybody watching the Obi-Wan Kenobi series?

Noooo… It just doesn't appeal to me. The idea of a dark, dramatic take on a character from a much loved movie, especially since it's based on the version of him from the terrible written prequel movies, is very unappealing XD

It's like saying “We're going to give you a new dark drama series about James Bond! But it's based on David Niven's portrayal from the weird Casino Royale movie…”
That's a hard sell, even if it does try and bridge it with the original film.

—————————

I watched "Down with Love"
Staring Obi-Wan's Ewan McGregor, Renee Zwellger, and David Hyde Pierce.

It was a fun, silly film. The story is set in he late 1960s. A Midwestern girl comes to New York to promote her book about female sexual empowerment and gets in a weird relationship with the super ladies man Catcher Bloch, played by McGregor, WITH his natural accent.

The movie is ultra-stylised in a VERY 1960s way, so much so you can be fooled that it really IS a 1960s quirky sex-comedy farce staring Shirley MacLaine and Tony Curtis or maybe even Peter Sellers. It's quite amazing in that way. David Hyde Pierce is a perfect Tony Randall.

Some small parts were a little cheekier than a 1960s film but it was mostly SPOT on. Not a Pastiche or an imitation but a pure homage.
The story even had the same stupid, illogical twists and turns of a 1960s story, but you don't care because it all fits.
It was a good experience.

Indeed, the cool pimped-up enemy warships are commanded by anime girls in cute dresses who take their duties very seriously. Can a lone submarine somehow get past the sinister Fleet of Fog to deliver a new warhead to the U.S. that could change the war? It's well worth the ride.

Ozoneocean wrote:
The blue steel thing is a strange anime about ships with weird sigils isn't it?

dpat57 wrote:
I was re-watching Arpeggio of Blue Steel on Crunchyroll last night and saw a banner for SPY x FAMILY, clicked on it and started watching, that kid is something else.

Dave Mire wrote:
Is anybody watching the Obi-Wan Kenobi series?

I've heard only bad things about it. All the Disney star wars I've seen is poorly written cash grab.

Dave Mire wrote:

Is anybody watching the Obi-Wan Kenobi series?

I tapped out after the Boba Fett show, so I haven't watched. Saw a couple reviews here and there.

I'm still interested in some of the behind-the-scenes stuff on Star Wars. But even that interest is fading, haha.


Started watching The Orville, which is back after a LONG hiatus. Wow, this show is now more Star Trek than Star Trek. They've pulled way back on the comedy, though there are still a few funny moments, character-based, and the occasional joke. I'm really liking it so far.

I'm watching the new season of The Orville.

Banes, you were right, it's much more dramatic now. The writing is still pretty heavy handed but maybe not quite as much as it was. It IS more Star Trek than ever now though, espey with the music.

They get the same thing wrong as all SciFi shows though 🤣
They have massive, high speed space warships with light speed energy weapons dogfighting each other super close like WW1 bi-planes, super slowly…
Most SciFi shows always do this.
Earth warships stopped fighting each other at close visual range in WW2, even in WW1 they started to do that. And in the modern world virtually no close range dogfights happen with fighter jets, it's all done beyond visual range now.
Think about the situation in space where you can see for millions of Kilometers and your weapons have collossol range… No fights will ever happen up close unless it's a special case. Most fights would happen where the enemy is only a little blip on a sensor.

Banes wrote:

Dave Mire wrote:

Is anybody watching the Obi-Wan Kenobi series?

I tapped out after the Boba Fett show, so I haven't watched. Saw a couple reviews here and there.

I'm still interested in some of the behind-the-scenes stuff on Star Wars. But even that interest is fading, haha.


Started watching The Orville, which is back after a LONG hiatus. Wow, this show is now more Star Trek than Star Trek. They've pulled way back on the comedy, though there are still a few funny moments, character-based, and the occasional joke. I'm really liking it so far.

Yeah they made bona fett boring. The best if that was the episode when Mando showed up. Obi wan is okay except the action scenes are crap. They make daytime soap fights look exciting.

Ozoneocean wrote:
I'm watching the new season of The Orville.

Banes, you were right, it's much more dramatic now. The writing is still pretty heavy handed but maybe not quite as much as it was. It IS more Star Trek than ever now though, espey with the music.

They get the same thing wrong as all SciFi shows though 🤣
They have massive, high speed space warships with light speed energy weapons dogfighting each other super close like WW1 bi-planes, super slowly…
Most SciFi shows always do this.
Earth warships stopped fighting each other at close visual range in WW2, even in WW1 they started to do that. And in the modern world virtually no close range dogfights happen with fighter jets, it's all done beyond visual range now.
Think about the situation in space where you can see for millions of Kilometers and your weapons have collossol range… No fights will ever happen up close unless it's a special case. Most fights would happen where the enemy is only a little blip on a sensor.

Ozoneocean wrote:
I'm watching the new season of The Orville.

Banes, you were right, it's much more dramatic now. The writing is still pretty heavy handed but maybe not quite as much as it was. It IS more Star Trek than ever now though, espey with the music.

They get the same thing wrong as all SciFi shows though 🤣
They have massive, high speed space warships with light speed energy weapons dogfighting each other super close like WW1 bi-planes, super slowly…
Most SciFi shows always do this.
Earth warships stopped fighting each other at close visual range in WW2, even in WW1 they started to do that. And in the modern world virtually no close range dogfights happen with fighter jets, it's all done beyond visual range now.
Think about the situation in space where you can see for millions of Kilometers and your weapons have collossol range… No fights will ever happen up close unless it's a special case. Most fights would happen where the enemy is only a little blip on a sensor.

The expanse is the best for this. Or was I suppose as it's finished now. To be fair when it comes to sci fi shows it's hard to beat.

Ozoneocean got it right when he said it's a mix of WW1 and WW2 dogfighting with some ship close quarter action. The classic ST:TOS Balance of Terror is straight from the Enemy Below about hunting a U-Boat and Star Wars A New Hope
is directly from Dambusters . There's a side by side comparison of Star Wars and Dambusters attack runs that is uncanny. Lucas copied it.

They're going for what looks best on screen. Recent WW2 air war movies have had ridiculous CGI too with turns way too tight and silly maneuvers all for the screen and to hell with realism. Don't see great air to air sequences like Battle of Britain (with real aircraft) even for well documented encounters like Midway. The recent Midway movie was silly with the turns and Dauntless SBD as fighters. Two recent films about the Poles in Battle of Britain weren't quite as bad though again it's all about keeping the dogfight maneuvers on screen.

I've seen Red Tails , Mission of Honor/Hurricane , 303 Squadron and Dauntless all recently. Red Tails was about the Tuskegee airmen and the air combat scenes are total fantasy. All suffer from stuffing air combat maneuvers into a movie screen so all the turns are way too tight and Red Tails has some silly moves and P-51 taking on Me-262 in dogfights. The ones about the Poles in the Battle of Britain are much better and Dauntless is a low budget take off on Midway though does get the bombing runs right and includes Wildcats that the big budget movie left out.

Ozoneocean wrote:
They get the same thing wrong as all SciFi shows though 🤣
They have massive, high speed space warships with light speed energy weapons dogfighting each other super close like WW1 bi-planes, super slowly…
Most SciFi shows always do this.

Yeah I want a vast blazing starscape with two almost unnoticeable points of light at opposite corners, one of them flares brightly and vanishes, battle over. That's the kind of stirring space battles us real Sci-Fi fans need to see, none of this poseur crap. Hands up (dammit where are the smileys in this place?) those of us who have done a comic page mocking this age-old complaint.

dpat57 wrote:

Ozoneocean wrote:
They get the same thing wrong as all SciFi shows though 🤣
They have massive, high speed space warships with light speed energy weapons dogfighting each other super close like WW1 bi-planes, super slowly…
Most SciFi shows always do this.

Yeah I want a vast blazing starscape with two almost unnoticeable points of light at opposite corners, one of them flares brightly and vanishes, battle over. That's the kind of stirring space battles us real Sci-Fi fans need to see, none of this poseur crap. Hands up (dammit where are the smileys in this place?) those of us who have done a comic page mocking this age-old complaint.

♥️
“I've seen things, you people wouldn't believe, hmmm.
… attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate…”

I finally sat through the Jason Mamoa Conan.
All of it.

It wasn't more true to the character than the Arnold Schwarzenegger films as some have said. It was less true all in all except in certain key aspects-
-Jason had darker skin and hair, more like Conan.
- Jason's Conan was smarter,
-There was more magic.

Apart from that the origin story they included wasn't good. It was absolutely based on the Arnold Conan origin, but without showing Conan as a slave which he never was in the books, so that's meant to make it technically more true… Except it's LESS true since that origin was only there FOR the Arnold story!
Without slave Conan we don't need to see Conan as a boy. We don't need to see his dead mum or have a revenge story about the death of his dad and the scene with the sword forging or the rifle of steel. In the Arnold version that stuff enhanced his Nietzschean mythos and the legend of his forging. In the Mamoa version, since he was never a slave it just weakens his character because there's no contrast or journey from that origin and so no point to it.

Asside from that the Arnold version included the real Conan origin anyway (from the books), which was the assult on the tower. This movie didn't have that.

A lot of the action in the Mamoa dim was very Conan though, showing him fighting with strength and cunning. But he could have used a much heavier sword. Clearly his prop weapon weighed nothing and it shows…
While Arnold's was very much overweight and that added to his performance.

THE 355 - Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Diane Kruger, Fan Bingbing, Lupita Nyong'o, Sebastian Stan. 5 women working for different gov agencies decide to get together to find a “drive” (looks like a cell phone) that can alter history? Bad guy Sebastian also in the hunt and tries to stop the girls. Beyond ridiculous fight scenes galore. Do they find it and who cares….a 1 1/2 on the Moizmeter.

CRISIS - Gary Oldman, Luke Evans, Evangeline Lilly, Armie Hammer and a cast of thousands, ridiculous over-cast leaves little interest in anyone. Just under 2 hrs and some summaries take longer to read than to watch movie. A cure for drug use seems found but alas, doesn't work, or at least I think it didn't, got lost with all those characters. Would have been better to just concentrate on a few but keeps jumping to the point where I couldn't follow whoever that was and what they were doing. An almost 2 on the Moizmeter,

Rewatched Crisis and second viewing made a bit more sense, so it now gets a 2 1/2, always liked Gary Oldman in anything.

Just finish watching Russian Doll. I liked it. It’s raunchy, lewd, trippy, confusing and part time funny. I liked the reset time issues along with the memory still intact. The series to me flow like a comic book. It’s a nice time loop and trippy space/time travel series. When the universe starts to collapse or re-adjust itself things get trippy. I’m Purposely Leaving out details so that if you decide to watch it, you get the same feeling I got of, “where is this story going?” So no names, or plots. Just watch. It rated “R” or “MA”.

Ozoneocean wrote:
I finally sat through the Jason Mamoa Conan.
All of it.

It wasn't more true to the character than the Arnold Schwarzenegger films as some have said. It was less true all in all except in certain key aspects-
-Jason had darker skin and hair, more like Conan.
- Jason's Conan was smarter,
-There was more magic.

Apart from that the origin story they included wasn't good. It was absolutely based on the Arnold Conan origin, but without showing Conan as a slave which he never was in the books, so that's meant to make it technically more true… Except it's LESS true since that origin was only there FOR the Arnold story!
Without slave Conan we don't need to see Conan as a boy. We don't need to see his dead mum or have a revenge story about the death of his dad and the scene with the sword forging or the rifle of steel. In the Arnold version that stuff enhanced his Nietzschean mythos and the legend of his forging. In the Mamoa version, since he was never a slave it just weakens his character because there's no contrast or journey from that origin and so no point to it.

Asside from that the Arnold version included the real Conan origin anyway (from the books), which was the assult on the tower. This movie didn't have that.

A lot of the action in the Mamoa dim was very Conan though, showing him fighting with strength and cunning. But he could have used a much heavier sword. Clearly his prop weapon weighed nothing and it shows…
While Arnold's was very much overweight and that added to his performance.

Now you are going to make me watch it now. I had no intention of watch this new version of Conan but you said a few things I need to see myself. I wonder why they took out the Slave Origin? Is it the same universe or an alternate crap we all know and love? Am I going to cringe when I see his sword? You said it is light. Welp, I guess I find out soon.

cdmalcolm1 wrote:
Now you are going to make me watch it now. I had no intention of watch this new version of Conan but you said a few things I need to see myself. I wonder why they took out the Slave Origin? Is it the same universe or an alternate crap we all know and love? Am I going to cringe when I see his sword? You said it is light. Welp, I guess I find out soon.

- They removed the slave origin because they wanted to make it more like the original stories
- It's the same universe but a total reboot.
- The sword looks ok enough, but if you've seen enough real sword usage you can recognise there's no heft to it at all and that's a little off-putting, it looks like he's using a light prop, which of course he is XD

Also, this Conan is a lot meaner and more savage than the Arny version. There was a sort of honour to the Arnold version, especially in fights. This one is just a mean shit. I like the honourable version more, it fits in with the hero archetype more, which is WHY we like the character. Brutality for brutality's sake has never been my thing.

Invincible and the boys

These 2 shows turned out way better than I thought they would.

mightguy15 wrote:
Invincible and the boys

These 2 shows turned out way better than I thought they would.

Watching the Boys myself. Amazon Prime is my only service. Heard a lot about and decided to check it out. I generally haven't liked superhero series since the 1966 Batman or the Linda Carter Wonder Woman. That's campy me. This is good because it's like how I thought supes would be in the real world.

Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness.
Not bad I suppose, convoluted and all over the place and barely stops to breathe but some good stuff in there. Some dodgy cgi, it's like they aren't even trying to make it look real.

Also went back and watched the rest of Obi wan. Actually pretty good all in. Definitely ended better than it started.

I liked the second half of Obi-Wan. Despite the sequels being terrible, McGregor and Christianson have great chemistry together. It was nice seeing them again. They succeeded in connecting Anakin to Vader much better than the prequels did.

Watched an indy horror film in the vein of The Babadook called “The Arbors”. Really did well depicting social anxiety and mental illness.

Also watched Last Night in Soho. If you can get past the heavy-handed message, that all men suck, it is an engaging and beautiful movie. This is the movie Suckerpunch was trying to be.

Yeah the second half of Obi wan really turned it around.

Currently on stranger things season 4, the jury is out/ I mean it's good but where I've got to things aren't quite coming together. Hopefully that changes.

Genejoke wrote:
Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness.

It wasn't bad, but it didn't have a proper ending from all the threads that were set up so it was more like an episode in a TV series than a contained movie, even in terms of sequel bait.
———–

sleeping_gorilla wrote:
Also watched Last Night in Soho. If you can get past the heavy-handed message, that all men suck, it is an engaging and beautiful movie. This is the movie Suckerpunch was trying to be.

The message of Suckerpunch wasn't that men suck, it was about self sacrifice being more important than self preservation. The protagonist achieved salvation through her own destruction.
Sorry if that wasn't what you meant :)
The other day I learned that my mum knows the star of Babbadook. She used to live pretty close. She's also in the great 20s detective series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.

————–

I saw The Valet the other night

It was REALLY good. I thought it'd probably be a sappy light romantic comedy but it was more than that, it was genuinely really touching.

The scenario is that a movie star having a secret affair with a married billionaire developer. While secretly leaving a hotel late at night they get into an argument which attracts the paparazzi. A Vallet riding home on his bike crashes into their parked car and gets in the photos.

The next day there's speculation in the gossip columns whether the star is dating the billionaire. The billionaire's his wife sees this and starts to get furious… The Movie star also sees this and worries that her new film will tank because of people focussing on the scandal.
The clever manager of the billionaire comes up with a plan to make it look like the sar was actually dating the Vallet from the photo and it was just a coincidence that the billionare happened to be there…

So he convinces the vallet to start a fake relationship with the star.

Normally the way this story would go is that the star and the vallet would actually fall in love for real… but no. None of that or the other expected love subpolts go the way you've think they would. This is actually a really nice film about friendship and diversity.

SICARIO - (2015) Emily Blunt (be still my heart), Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Daniel Kaluuya, Victor Garber, Maximiliano Hernandez. US agents trying to hinder Mexican drug cartels near border (ElPaso?) Josh hires Emily to assist while Benicio seems to be working on his own for revenge re killing of his wife and young daughter by cartel leader. Many police are corrupt on either side, Benicio starts killing them to get to the main bad guy. Poor Emily is stuck trying to figure out who's what. A bit confusing but still a good watch getting a 3 on the Moizmeter.

The Moizmeter is good enough for me.